Krauthammer on Benghazi report: The Obama admin pretends that these attacks are “one-shot deals”

posted at 9:31 pm on April 23, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

As predicted, the House GOP’s release of an interim report on their ongoing investigation into last September’s Benghazi attack — offering a rather scathing assessment of Hillary Clinton and the White House’s handling of the situation before, during, and after — was not particularly well received in all circles, and several House Democrats are already up in arms about it. In a letter to Speaker Boehner:

We are concerned that by issuing this staff report with only five Republican Committee Chairmen, you are sacrificing accuracy in favor of partisanship. You have stated repeatedly over the past several months that “It’s time for us to get back to regular order here in Congress.”[2] Yet, recent press accounts indicate that you are abandoning regular order on Benghazi and choosing to pursue this highly partisan approach because you are “trying to head off a GOP rebellion” over the way this investigation has been handled.[3]

Although staff reports may be appropriate in some circumstances, we do not believe a partisan staff report should be used in this case, which involves the death of a U.S. Ambassador and three other Americans and is based on sensitive and classified national security information.

Except that, A) as Kirsten Powers pointed out on Fox News this evening, nobody is preventing Democrats from getting more involved in the investigation, and it sure seems an awful lot like the GOP are the only ones who are all that interested it it, and B) that “sacrificing accuracy” claim itself just isn’t accurate. As Krauthammer chimed in, there was a pretty glaring contradiction between some of then-Secretary Clinton’s testimony and the evidence found by the House investigation:

Well, the Democrats can say it’s a partisan attack. But when you produce documentary evidence of a charge that what she said when she addressed the Congress was not exactly right. That she was not aware of these security demands and threats.

Well, what the report says is that there is a cable that she signed which acknowledges the request by the then-ambassador for additional security, and then nonetheless orders the withdraw of security assets in Libya. So, that’s a contradiction to what she said.

And the other damning evidence here, again, it doesn’t matter who the source is; it’s what the facts of the matter. That they did edit the talking points to remove references to al Qaeda which fits in the pattern that we discussed even earlier. The attempt always to try to pretend that these aren’t part of a global jihad, whether it’s here, it’s Boston, the underwear attacker or the Fort Hood shooter. It’s a constant, in this administration, as a way to say ‘No, it’s not. It’s a one-shot deal and let’s go on.’ And I think that really is the problem that underlies all of this.

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